Effects Of Output Activities On Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary acquisition has gradually been attached importance to by the teachers and scholars. However, few studies count output practice as a means of improving vocabulary acquisition.The present study aims to contribute to the understanding of the role of second language output by exploring the effects of output-oriented activities on vocabulary recognition and production. In order to answer the research questions, an experiment was carried out. Two parallel Senior Grade Two classes with 29 students respectively participated in the study. They were randomly chosen as control group and experimental group. After 10 minutes' presentation and teacher's briefly explanation to 10 new words concerned with Internet in both groups, the experimental group practiced the target words through a series of output-oriented activities while the control group were exposed to four reading materials containing the target words and did some vocabulary exercises to consolidate the words. Then, four posttests on vocabulary recognition and production were given immediately, a week later, two weeks later and three weeks later respectively.The results of the experiment indicates that output activities have better effect than comprehension-based input activities do on vocabulary recognition and production. The findings gave empirically support for output hypothesis and also had pedagogical implications on vocabulary acquisition.